For nearly all of that century, the 1919 made-in-Humboldt movie The Valley of the Giants was thought lost. In 2010, one surviving print surfaced in an archive in Russia. Film historian Edward Lorusso of Maine started a crowd-funding campaign to translate the silent movie’s Russian inter-titles (dialogue and narrative in a silent film) into English […]
Alex Service
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Not Expelled But Not Fully Welcome
Editor’s note: This story includes racist language in quotations from historical newspaper articles. Humboldt County’s Chinese history is notorious. For nearly 70 years, from the mid-1880s to the early 1950s, a keynote of Humboldt’s public identity was the (false) assertion the county had successfully expelled all its Chinese or Chinese American residents. During one expulsion […]
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Chinese Again in Humboldt, Part Four
Editor’s note: The following article contains racist language in quotations from historical newspaper articles. It originally appeared in the Ferndale Enterprise. At the beginning of October of 1906, anti-Chinese labor activists across Humboldt were in uproar over an Oregon-based company’s attempt to bring a mixed-race workforce to the new salmon cannery at Port Kenyon, near […]
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Chinese Again in Humboldt, Part Three
Editor’s note: This story, which originally ran in the Ferndale Enterprise, includes racist language in quotations from historical newspaper articles. On Sunday, Sept. 30, 1906, one day after a mixed-race workforce of Chinese and Japanese men and white women arrived at the Starbuck-Tallant Co.’s salmon cannery in Port Kenyon, a mass meeting took place in […]
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Chinese Again in Humboldt, Part Two
Editor’s note: This story, which originally appeared in the Ferndale Enterprise, contains quotations that include racist language and slurs. On Saturday, Sept. 29, 1906, the steamer Roanoke arrived in Eureka’s harbor from Astoria, Oregon. Among its passengers were members of the management team for the new salmon cannery about to begin operations at Port Kenyon, […]
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Chinese Again in Humboldt, Part One
In 1906, 20 years had passed since the majority of Humboldt’s Chinese residents were driven out of the county. The accidental death in 1885 of a Eureka city council member, caught in the crossfire in a shootout between two Chinese men at Eureka’s Fourth and E streets, was seized on by anti-Chinese activists as an […]
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Between Prejudice and Profit
Editor’s note: In memory of this month’s anniversary of the expulsion of Chinese residents from Eureka, the Journal is looking back at a controversy from that unfortunate chapter of Humboldt County history. Be advised that this story contains offensive and racist language in historical quotations. Early in the year 1886, Ferndale and many other Humboldt […]
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Who Haunts the Stairways of the Historic Eagle House?
Have you been in an old house or historic building and heard footsteps on the stairs? You hear the distinct creak of footfalls on each step and you’re certain that some living person must be there. And then … . You see no one. Maybe you even realize you’re alone in the house. Or, at […]
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Champions of the Rodeo
On March 27, 1912, the Fortuna Advance newspaper ran an article headlined, “Black Man Rides White Man Thrown.” The Advance reported that a “bronco busting exhibition given by Jeff Stall the colored dare-devil from Ferndale” took place March 24 “at the old fairgrounds in Rohnerville.” More than 200 people attended and “in return for the […]